A rogue’s life: Mac Parry spills the beans

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun06.19.2013

Mac Parry with some of his photos for a show of his work at Bob Rennie’s gallery in Chinatown in Vancouver on June 19, 2013.Steve Bosch
/ PNG

JUNE 19 2013. Mac Parry with some of his photos for a show of his work at Bob Rennie's gallery in Chinatown in Vancouver, B.C., on June 19, 2013. (Steve Bosch / PNG staff photo) 00021834A.Steve Bosch
/ PNG

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An interview with Mac Parry, June 19, 2013, about an exhibit of photos from his Vancouver Sun column.

Sun: How many photos are in the show?

Parry: Three hundred and sixty-five.

Sun: And they’re all from your column? Who are the subjects?

Parry: Good God. There are about 500 different people. Eminent, and not-so-eminent.

Sun: How do you decide who to photograph? The size of their cleavage?

Parry: Ho (bleeping) ho. Yeah, Philip Owen had terrific cleavage, I remember. I can’t say (why I choose a subject)…I just go to functions. Usually the people have some particular involvement with the thing. If it’s a gala, they probably chair it, or head a committee, or are well-known. Quite often things I go to are specific…if it’s a book launch, for instance, (the photo) will probably be the author. Or the author and the publisher. If’s it a winery, it’s probably the person who makes the wine, or a person who’s drunk in the corner.

Sun: You’re known for your shots taken from above a subject, looking down. Do you stand on chairs?

Parry: Sometimes I do. There’s a very good reason for this, by the way. Lots of others photographers do it - Fred Lee does exactly the same thing. Here’s why. One, it began by me being taller than most people (he’s six foot three). Two, when you’re photographing people in a crowd – which I often am – it’s a very good way to get rid of the background. The background being other people, picking their noses or drinking. It’s a very good way of isolating that background, getting rid of it.

If the photograph is of women, it tends to be to their advantage. You show the expensive stuff. If you’re at a gala for instance, you will see the hair, the jewelry, the stuff on which they’ve spent money. Incidentally, if they’re wearing décolletage, which they sometimes do, you will see that.

Also because I use a fairly wide angle lens the body tapers a little, which nobody complains of. And I think it amuses many women that when men are involved, it tends to accentuate their hair loss, because you see more of their bald head.

Sun: You started off as a photographer before you became a writer and editor?

Parry: Oh (bleep) yes.

Sun: Where were you born?

Parry: England. Right in the middle, a town called Walsall.

Sun: When did you leave for the colonies?

Parry: March 1957.

Sun: When were you born?

Parry: Oct. 6, 1936.

Sun: What were your goals when you were a kid? Did you want to be a writer, a photographer?

Parry: I was always interested in photography. I actually wanted to be an architect. Later on I thought it would be good to be in the army and be a bloody officer. That was a short-lived thing.

Sun: You actually joined the army?

Parry: No.

Sun: Why Canada in 1957, why not the States?

Parry: I always intended to come here, to B.C., from the age of about nine or 10.

Sun: Why?

Parry: Because a school teacher told us about the salmon spawning in the tributary rivers to the Fraser. She told us they went to spawn, this great miracle, in very shallow water, and they were so close together – this is exactly what she said – they are so thick when they spawn, you could stand an umbrella or walking stick between them and it would stand upright.

We used to go home for lunch, dinner we called it then. I remember telling my mom ‘when I grow up I’m going to go and live by the Fraser River, and see those salmon.’ Which I have done, several times. And that school teacher was dead right, it’s a great, inspiring miracle. I still love to see it.

Sun: What were you doing in England, before you came to Canada?

Parry: I spent three years studying to be a civil engineer. And also I was a member of the musicians union. I played saxophone, and had my own band. We played popular music of the time, plus jazz, plus, as it was emerging at the time, rock and roll. In the Yakety Sax style.

Sun: You were Boots Parry? (Boots Randolph did Yakety Sax.)

Parry: Yeah, as a matter of fact I had a pal here who was creative director of an advertising agency who used to call me the Working Girl’s Boots Randolph.

Sun: What happened during the Second World War in Walsall?

Parry: They dropped some bombs. Mostly they dropped them a few miles away in Birmingham, but they dropped some close to us. I saw them drop one, right on the gasworks. The father of a friend of mine won the George medal for defusing it.

Another bomb went off and killed about 20 horses in a field next to the gasworks. We had a gun across the street that used to shoot at the airplanes. But in the blitz of Birmingham we certainly had to go down to our air raid shelter, and we would watch the searchlights.

Sun: How far were you from Birmingham?

Parry: About nine miles.

Sun: What did your dad do?

Parry: He was a copper.

Sun: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

Parry: Yep, two brothers. One of them was a copper, too, for 30 years. He was a copper in St. Catherines, Ontario. The one in England was the best musician of all, and still plays. He’s kind of eccentric, he’s an obsessive collector of B-3 Hammonds (organs). He actually sheared both bones in one leg and a shin humping a Leslie (speaker) to his van.

He used to have a band called Dr. Doug and the Damned. They wore sort of bowler hats with Viking horns coming out. There was a picture of him playing a Fender Strat with an old Vox compression amp, you remember those?

Sun: This would have been the Beatles era?

Parry: Yeah. That band were all like 14 or 15 and they played all over the West Midlands. But none of them was old enough to drive. They owned a van, but they had to hire a guy to drive it.

Sun: When you moved here in ’57, you got an engineering job, right?

Parry: I did. I arrived here one night, got drunk, threw up off the Granville Bridge and got a job next morning as instrument man building the Woodward’s parking garage. The one that’s since been demolished.

Sun: What was wrong with that, bad steel?

Parry: No, the steel wasn’t bad. The cantilevered floors, which were tapered cantilevered (weren’t strong enough). I remember saying to my rod man – and to the engineer - these are not here for a long time, these things are going to crack, they’re just too slender.

My rod man turned out to be very eminent – his dad was agent to the Duke of Westminster, who owns all the Grosvenor Group property. He’s now Sir Michael Ridley, living in Knightsbridge.

But anyway it was pretty clear, even to somebody with rudimentary understanding, that those cantilevers were not (going to last). They put stays, vertical props between to hold them up.

Sun: How long did you stay in engineering?

Parry: I was only on that job about four months. It was a revelation, how quick construction was in Canada compared to Britain.

So I joined BC Electric and went up to build a dam. It was called the Mission Dam at the time, it’s now called the Terzhagi Dam. Up on the Bridge River.

I went there as a soil inspector, which is sort of an engineering sub-trade. But since it was an earth dam, it was pretty important. You can’t just pile up heaps of dirt and keep the water back. It was technically the most complex structure the guy who designed it ever made, Dr. Karl Terzhagi.

He’s the guy who invented the entire science of soil mechanics, as it was called then. Geo-technical science, as it is now. It’s an unbelievably complicated structure.

Because I liked photography I managed to parlay my job into assistant to the guy who represented Terzhagi, a professor from the University of Illinois. And in a very short time I installed a darkroom and became project photographer. And I did that for three years. It was an entire project – dams, tunnels, power house, transmission lines.

Sun: What did you do with all the photos? Are they in the BC Electric (which is now BC Hydro) files?

Parry: I imagine they are. I’ve actually got one of them, me way up on the side of the hill looking through a motion picture camera.

Sun: What kind of camera were you using?

Parry: I used a whole series of cameras, but mostly Roloflexes, and Leica 3G. I shot some on four by five (film), which would have been on a Graphic.

Sun: Was it was really complicated to take photos?

Parry: Nope, it was simple. You put film in the camera, focused it, read the exposure, took the shot, went in the darkroom and made a print. I also used to run a camera that went down a drill hole, 500 feet into the ground, two inches wide. I used to have to split 16 millimetre film to 10 mm in the dark and load this thing up.

When they drill a hole, to make the entire bottom of the valley impervious they would pump grout down there, but they had to know where it was. And that was part of my job.

Sun: After three years of that, you moved back to town?

Parry: You bet. I thought ‘man, I’m set up now,’ and went to California. In my MG, went to San Francisco. I didn’t know where I was going – I thought I might go to Nassau in the Bahamas. All I wanted to do was have a good time and read the John Steinbeck books. But then I got married. New Year’s Eve, 1960, Dec. 31st, 1960. That was my first marriage.

I came back to Vancouver and joined a firm called Lenkurt Electric, which was a subsidiary of General Telephone. It was a big telecommunications manufacturer…it built microwave systems all over Canada, from coast to coast and up to the Arctic. I joined them as a photographer. I shot stuff at the plant in Burnaby, where I had a darkroom and studio, but I used to travel all over Canada. Sometimes to the parent company in San Carlos, California.

I was on staff. Then I was shooting mostly on four by five. I did a lot of aerial photography, that was done on Roloflexes. Towards the end I was shooting on Nikon FTNs, using a lot of 35 mm. Doing a fair amount of stuff with photomicrography…as we got more and more into high tech, I was shooting a lot of stuff through the microscope. And travelling all over.

As part of that gig my boss retired and I became head of public relations and advertising as well. I was there for 10 years. I would buy a lot of advertising in trade publications and newspapers across Canada. I knew a guy who was senior at a local ad agency, another pal was a salesman at what was called the BC Business Journal. We started to start a business magazine, which we did.

Sun: You were the editor?

Parry: I was. But when we started it, I was going to be the photographer, and handle the graphic side. But we’d barely got the thing started when the guy who was going to be the publisher and editor decided to do something else. So that left the two of us, and I became the editor. The easiest thing to do was to write the entire thing myself, and take the photographs, which I did.

Sun: What year was this?

Parry: 1971.

Sun: How long did that last?

Parry: Three years.

Sun: I remember seeing your name in Canadian and Weekend magazine…

Parry: Yeah, if you’re in the racket, other editors phone you and ask you to do stuff. I used to do stuff for Canadian Business….I can’t remember all the places I freelanced material to. As well as running the magazine, which later became two magazines. The one was called BC Affairs, the other was called BC Industry Reports. We ran out of money and they were absorbed into BC Business magazine.

The guys who published that, Joe Martin and a guy whose name I’ve forgotten, had taken over the operation of a magazine called Dick McLean’s Guide. When it began it was Dick McLean’s Greater Vancouver Greeter Guide. Ridiculous name.

They had taken that over…Dick never had any financial interest, it belonged to Agency Press. It was near death, so they said can you do anything with this? I said ‘(bleep) yeah.’ With a whole bunch of pals of mine, such as Rick Staehling, Marv Newland, John Gleeson, John Long and assorted other ne’er-do-wells,…we (sat) in old Ritz Hotel beer parlour and designed a magazine. Which was actually a total straight copy of New York magazine. We launched that in ’73. It still exists, as Vancouver Magazine.

We didn’t have time to change the title right off, so the first one I ever did was still called Vancouver Leisure. But I diminished the Leisure over the course of a few months and it became Vancouver Magazine. And I’m happy to stay it still exists.

Sun: You were editor of Van mag for years…

Parry: Sixteen years.

Sun: When did Ron Stern buy it?

Parry: Stern bought it in ’74, and he ran it until ’82 or something. Then it was acquired by various and assorted and continuing rogues from Toronto and Montreal.

Sun: It seemed that Stern gave you free reign to do anything.

Parry: Pretty much. He was exactly the kind of publisher you want. Very prudent. The general manager Jim Webb, very prudent. The headquarters were pretty low class, which is exactly what you want. I think the money should be spent, not on your office or frills, it should be spent on the product, and on the people who actually make it. Which is the writers, photographers and illustrators. You want to pay them as much as you can.

I don’t know how much we paid you. Probably not much.

Sun: About $400 or $500 per story.

Parry: That was, and remains, my theory – put the money into what the thing is comprised of, not into its surroundings and unnecessary things.

Sun: It turned out there was a whole bunch of talented people in Vancouver.

Parry: There’s no question. You can’t have a community of the character of Vancouver and not have it bulging with talent.

Sun: People like Peter Trower, the logger poet. I remember him writing several amazing stories on life in the woods.

Parry: He later incorporated a lot of them into at least one novel. Ron wasn’t always entirely happy with Trower. He tended to be less happy with Bob Hunter, the Greenpeace founder. Mainly because for some reason Bob tended to work chicken-keeping into his stories. I hired him as a columnist, and he also wrote features for us. But sometimes Ron would say ‘I’ve heard just about enough of that Bob Hunter’s chickens.’ I think it was because Ron and Bob both came from Winnipeg.

We had quite a few of those Greenpeace guys writing at Van mag. (Paul) Watson wrote for us, (Ben) Metcalfe of course.

Sun: Many Sun writers started there: Doug Ward, Doug Todd.

Parry: The great big tall bastard. The giant, what was his name…Alan Daniels.

Sun: But your big discovery was Doug Coupland.

Parry: I guess so. He’s the one who turned out to have the most enduring career. He showed promise right from the start.

Les Wiseman was another superb writer, who, should he have chosen, had he had a different temperament and everything, might well have become in the firmament of guys like Coupland. But he chose to go in other directions. But he was a divine writer when he wanted to be. Well, not when he wanted to be – that’s what he was.

I had a hell of a lot of guys…Matti Lansoo used to write a column for us in London. I would compare it to Auberon Waugh’s column, and think (bleep) this Lansoo writes at least as well, most of the time.

I sometimes used to look at that magazine and say ‘How did we get all this good stuff in there?’

Sun: But then you left it for Viva or whatever it was called.

Parry: No, I left it for Western Living. (laughs) I was also in charge of Calgary and Edmonton magazines, and hired Bob Mercer from the Georgia Straight to go out to Calgary. I made a deal – ‘You only have to go for two years, and after two years I’ll find you a job in Vancouver.’

Well, when the two years were up the only job I could find for him was mine. So he left Calgary and came back to become editor of Vancouver magazine, and I went downstairs to Western Living, because the editor there (Andrew Scott) had moved on. But then after a little while John Dunlop invited me to go to Vista, so I went there.

Sun: Vista was a magazine started up by Frank Stronach. The rumour was it was founded with a lot of money.

Parry: Twelve million.

Sun: But you didn’t last there long.

Parry: No I didn’t (laughs). About 10 months. I don’t think I was the best choice. I didn’t know anything about Toronto. But I had a three-year contract. Basically after a year Stronach decided to go into politics, and he failed in that. He’d given up leading Magna, but he decided to go back into business. And then he hired his previous sidekick, who used to work at the Globe and Mail, Rob somebody.

Dunlop came to me and said ‘Frank says you have to go, because he wants so-and-so in your job.’ So they gave me $80,000 and said ‘Go home.’ Which I figured was a pretty good deal.

Sun: Did you use the money to buy your palatial estate in Deep Cove, or did you buy that before you left?

Parry: That was actually a summer camp in a summer camp in (wife) Nancy’s family. She’d lived here before I met her. She’s to blame for that.

Sun: When did you meet Nancy?

Parry: Seventy-three…late ’72. We’ve been together for 40 years now. We didn’t get married ‘til ’81.

Sun: What was Nancy’s last name?

Parry: Goodrich was her maiden name. She had been married and was a Benda. When we got married I wanted her to go back to her original name, Goodrich, and I would take that name. Malcolm Goodrich, people would just throw money at you. But her dad was still alive and he was quite conservative, and she thought he wouldn’t like that, so we didn’t do it. But I still wish we had.

Sun: When you came back, I remember being on a hiring committee and interviewing you for the features editor job at the Sun. But then they changed editors and got rid of the hiring committee, so we never got to make a decision.

Parry: That was Nick what’s his name…

Sun: Nick Hills. Then the next thing I l knew, you were writing a column in the Sun. How did that come about?

Parry: The guy who fronted the meeting we had, who had been the publisher at Van mag, Glenn Rogers, he said you should meet (then Sun editor) Ian Haysom. So I met Haysom. I wasn’t quite sure (what was happening), you never knew what was going on with Haysom.

But a couple of weeks later Mike McRanor called and said (adopting a thick Scottish accent) ‘The wee fella says you’re writing a column, You’d better bring some (bleeping) stuff in here for me to see.’

What? He said ‘We want you to do one a week, we’ll intersperse you with that other guy with a strange name who was writing a column…Sagi, Doug Sagi. It hadn’t even started and he called and said ‘you’ll have to do two a week.’ I still hadn’t started and he called and said ‘Sagi can’t keep up that load, you’ll have to do three a week.’

I started in September, 1991. About 10 years later I started doing stuff in the business section. That was (editor) Neil Reynolds’ idea. I heard a story later that they had some meeting going on with Reynolds and (reporter) Wyng Chow said ‘whose bright idea was it to out Mac Parry in the business section?’ And Reynolds said ‘Well, Wyng, it was my bright idea.’

Sun: Was the initial pitch a social column, a general column?

Parry: I don’t think anybody knew what it was supposed to be. I think Nick Hills wanted to hire (Vancouver magazine columnist) Valerie Gibson, but she couldn’t write once a week, it was hard enough for her to write once a month. There was a period when we were talking about putting Vancouver magazine into the Sun, so we had this informal inter-relationship. It was Nick Hills’ idea.

Sun: You started taking your own photos instead of having Sun staffers take them because….

Parry: Because I could. I’d stand around – they’d say so- and-so is going to turn up, and they wouldn’t, or they’d show up and say ‘Oh I can only be here for five minutes.’ And there’d be nobody there yet. It was a pain in the ass, so I started shooting. And then went through endless years of disputation with the comrades (the union).

It was just a jurisdictional matter. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the union position, in fact everything was right, because (the contract) said you couldn’t be a reporter and a photographer, that’s the contract language.But it eventually changed. In the master agreement, there’s an exemption clause, that Mac Parry is permitted to take photographs.

Sun: Who have you the nickname Mac?

Parry: My great-grandmother, the day I was born.

Sun: Why?

Parry: I don’t know.

Sun: So your family calls you Mac?

Parry: Apparently the day I was born they called me Malcolm, and she said ‘this is little Mac.’ And because she had power, the name stuck. My mother always wanted me to be Malcolm, but Mac stuck. Until the Vancouver Sun bylined me as Malcolm Parry. That’s when I became Malcolm.

Sun: What’s your middle name?

Parry: Frederick.

Sun: Malcolm Frederick Parry?

Parry: I was named after my dad. My dad was Frederick Godfrey Parry, because his dad was German. That explains my block head. My middle brother Don is Godfrey, so we both got dad’s name stuck in the middle.

Sun: Parry is a German name?

Parry: No, Parry is Welsh name.

Sun: How was your granddad German, then?

Parry: Well, I think he was born, as they say, on the other side of the mattress. There’s a certain amount of grey shading of the family there.

Sun: What kind of cancer did you have a few years ago?

Parry: Asophageal.

Sun: How many years ago was that?

Parry: Ten.

Sun: That’s one of those cancers that is almost always fatal, right?

Parry: About eighty-seven per cent of the time.

Sun: How did you beat that?

Parry: I didn’t beat it. They operated and took out a whole bunch of stuff, and afterward instead of dying I lived.

Surprised me. Well, it didn’t surprise me – I didn’t think I would die of that, even though I knew the odds. It’s peculiar.

Sun: Where do you buy your suits? You’re always nattily attired.

Parry: My suits? For many years I bought them at Holt-Renfrew. The last suit I bought, a Prada suit, I bought at The Bay. But generally I buy them at Holt’s. And generally I buy them at sale time. And they’re pretty well always Italian.

Sun: How tall are you?

Parry: How tall am I? In the old scale, six foot three.

Sun: How much do you weigh?

Parry: Right now, 175, which is what I weighed when I was a teenager.

Sun: What’s the secret to your skinniness?

Parry: Cancer! It’s the best weight-loss program. Before I got it I was about 195 – I was kind of porky. Then they did the surgery and give me chemo and radiation and everything and you just unreel like something that’s left out to die in the desert. I went down to 147 or something. But bit by bit I came back to my teenage weight, 175. And that’s okay.

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A rogue’s life: Mac Parry spills the beans

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